Patients with Pain Need Less Stigma, Not More

“Protection from and relief of pain and suffering are a fundamental feature of the human contract we make as parents, partners, children, family, friends, and community members, as well as a cardinal underpinning of the art and science of healing.” With these words a blue-ribbon panel of clinicians, researchers and policymakers convened by the prestigious Institute of Medicine opened its landmark 2011 report, Relieving Pain in America . To prepare this report, the panel distilled a vast literature and developed new, detailed estimates of the economic cost of pain in the United States. The panel also reached out to the public, soliciting written or oral testimonies from more than 2,000 persons with pain, their family members and care providers. These testimonies eloquently convey the stigma experienced by nearly every patient with chronic pain: Stigma—shaming and shunning—continues to befall patients with chronic pain, as do inequities in access to care. Tragically, people with the fewest resources to resist pain’s debilitating effects—minorities, the very young or very old, those with HIV, cancer, or substance abuse, the poor or homeless—are also marginalized by society. These “outsiders” have the least access to appropriate pain assessment and treatment. Even prosperous individuals often find their need for pain prevention or control is not addressed. Why is appropriate pain treatment so hard to deliver?The reasons are complex but must be addressed now. First, humans are social animals who look to their peers to …